Dawkins Deconstruction, Part I: Amateur on a Soapbox

Or rather, I would not believe he was real if it were not for the plethora of evidence which exists, even just the evidence circulating amongst the sprawling content of the internet. The book reviews, blog entries, interviews, lectures, Wikipedia entries, biographies, testimonials, and endless third-party sources seem to all confirm that there is a real, living man, who says the things Dawkins says.

And yet, some days it remains difficult to believe that he is not actually a fictional character, invented as a cruel parody of actual atheism by a group of chortling pranksters. Only such an alternative could adequately explain a book like The God Delusion, a book of such intellectual laziness I struggle believing that an Oxford graduate (a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, no less) could possibly make the kinds of arguments he makes. My rational mind rejects the conclusion of his serious existence sporadically; surely, something doesn’t add up. This can’t be right, it says. This is not atheism, or rationalism (a phrase he so often uses to describe himself and his mission throughout the text), this isn’t even anything. The book can only be a parody of atheism, not worthy of note, and Dawkins himself must be a practical joke, a hired actor, with lines written for him, fabricated with the care and precision of the most sophisticated conspiracy.

But then I snap back to reality and am faced with a horrifying situation: The God Delusion is – in a strictly objective sense – an appalling piece of writing, riddled with logical fallacies of every kind, defended and articulated by rhetoric masquerading as argument, heavy with emotional bias, and put forward with a scholarly ignorance so profound it is next to unbelievable. And yet Richard Dawkins is wildly popular.

How popular? Far from being universally rejected for amateur reasoning, The God Delusion is embraced by hundreds of thousands of readers across the world. The book has sold over 1.5 million copies, has been translated into 31 languages, and has been on the New York Times Bestseller list for longer than I care to ask. My paperback contains almost four pages of testimonials ranging from the Sunday Times to Philip Pullman, all raving about Dawkins’ groundbreaking brilliance (and bravery, no less). Dawkins himself holds honorary doctorates across a diverse range of universities, made Prospect magazine’s 2004 list of the top 100 public British intellectuals, and is a recipient of (among many awards) the Bicentennial Kelvin Medal of The Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow. “The God Delusion deserves multiple readings,” says Steven Weinberg of the Times Literary Supplement, “not just as an important work of science, but as a great work of literature.”

This is the truly frightening thing, and can only mean our culture has grown so intellectually lazy it mistakes fallacies and rhetoric for “elegant, engaging and persuasive” argument (Financial Times).

My thesis is simple: A critical, objective, informed reading of The God Delusion reveals that Richard Dawkins does not know how to argue systematically, or even to really argue in any formal way. For the majority of the text, his primary strategy seems to be to make unsupported statements, blur definitions between schools of thought, employ rhetoric in place of formal reasoning, and when an actual argument is required of him, make embarrassing mistakes and blatant fallacies. The God Delusion is disorganized almost, at times, to the point of rambling.

If you have the most recent paperback version, put out by First Mariner Books in 2008, you can follow along with my citations.

Inability to Distinguish

Of the many problems the book suffers from, one is Dawkins’ insistence to treat all religions, especially the three Abrahamic religions, as exactly the same thing. “For most of my purposes, all three Abrahamic religions can be treated as indistinguishable” (p.58). Obviously this creates problems with much of the argumentation of the text, as Christianity and Islam, for instance, are completely backwards from one another in other in their theology. I don’t mean stuffy, minute differences in how to pray and where to face while praying, I mean a completely separate, opposite worldview. That Christianity and Islam are “basically the same” is a highly prevalent falsehood. I discuss part of it here, in my post on the issue.

The effect of Dawkins’ lumping together of all the monotheistic religions is an attempt to avoid dealing with Christianity directly. Of course “Religion” can be shown to be sheer craziness and dogma if Islam is your only example. This way, Christianity can be dismissed along with Islam without any special defense.

While it is true that Dawkins brings up many examples of “extremist” Christianity, he confuses the readers by putting those examples up side-by-side with “extremist” Islam. When you see a Christian acting “extremist,” someone completely insane like Fred Phelps or (possibly more insane) Paul Hill, what you are seeing is a man going against everything for which Christianity stands. When you see an “extremist” Muslim, however, you are seeing a Muslim more less following a possible and accurate interpretation of his religion. This distinction becomes unfairly blurred when Dawkins puts both religions in a category and calls up examples of “extremism” like this. Readers walk away being shortchanged of the full truth of the matter.

Further, Dawkins also fails to distinguish between Biblically-based Christian doctrine and the fictional universe brought into being by the Catholic church, with what he (rightly) calls the Catholic “pantheon” of Saints and the nearly divine status of the Virgin Mary (p. 55).

These problems are due to his unsystematic approach, in which he fails to deal with each religion on its own. If he is really attempting to “attack God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever,” (p. 57) he is going to have to be vastly more thorough than merely lumping together all religions and attacking them as one entity.

Citations Needed

Dawkins also seems to have an inability to cite his sources. I don’t mean that he doesn’t have an extensive bibliography in the back of his book (he does), but that those pages are devoted to citing all the people and journals and books in his many off-topic tangents and anecdotes. In the times when it really matters, when he is making concrete statements about what a religion actually says or teaches, his sources are nowhere to be found.

“Christianity, just as much as Islam, teaches children that unquestioned faith is a virtue” (p. 346) This is a big claim (and another example of him being unable to differentiate between religions) and no where on the page does he cite anything.

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” (p. 51). This is the same thing. Now, this would have been an excellent way to open a chapter and lay down what would soon follow to be a systematic deconstruction of the Old Testament, but the rest of the chapter has very little to do with the Old Testament God. If Dawkins were actually rigorous about his deconstruction of religion, again, he would have dealt with this at length. As it is, the remainder of the chapter wanders off into many other, unrelated topics and we are left with empty words lacking citations.

“To which chapter, then, of which book of the Bible should we turn — for they are far from unanimous and some of them are odious by any reasonable standards” (81). Again, Dawkins makes a statement and does not cite any sources or follow it up in any way. He proceeds into a series of rhetorical questions, concluding that he “shall return to such questions in chapter 7.” One cannot help but ask, if he was going to devote an entire chapter to the subject, why he felt the need to drop such a powerfully declarative statement in the middle of another chapter, left standing without support, to be accepted. This is another example of Dawkins’ failure to organize his text in a critical, systematic way, and what makes criticisms of rambling so easy. Throughout the entirety of the text, Dawkins wanders into anecdotes at will (Chapter 3 has many good examples) and returns to his previously unsupported statements convinced of their absoluteness.

Use of Rhetoric

Dawkins’ primary argumentative device, where he should instead be using systematic reasoning, is rhetoric.

In one example, Dawkins quotes at length a piece of writing by Theologian Richard Swineburne (P. 89), which attempts to explain something (which is nevertheless off-topic) and instead of addressing Swineburne’s argument, dismisses it by simply saying, “This grotesque piece of reasoning, so damningly typical of the theological mind, reminds me of…” and lapses into another story which is not analogous. Here he deals in what we may call a rhetorical definition, in which he defines what he calls “the theological mind” (which, by the way, is also a Strawman fallacy) though he never actually defines it. All we have is “grotesque piece of reasoning” and “damningly typical.” If one cuts out his rhetoric, we really have no argument to speak of. This is typical of Dawkins, and an exhaustive list of each instance in which he rhetorically defines something he should be logically refuting would be a massive chore, as it occurs so frequently in the text.

This happens again on page 54, when Dawkins brings up the Trinity and offers only the sarcastic, “as if that were not clear enough.” He then quotes St. Gregory on the Trinity, follows it up with how this is a “characteristically obscurantist flavour of theology which – unlike science or most other branches of human scholarship – has not moved on in eight centuries.” No argument here. No argument of how the Trinity is impossible logically, no look at how it might be contradictory with the rest of the Bible, nothing. Dawkins goes on to quote Thomas Jefferson saying that religious people use ridicule as their only weapon, and that no one has ever had a distinct idea of the Trinity. And then, bafflingly, he moves on! Again, if one cuts out the rhetorical definitions, and appeals to Jefferson (which happen much more frequently than one might imagine) there is really no argument here. All we can take from this is that Dawkins doesn’t understand the Trinity. That’s it?

Much later in the text he attempts to give a summary of Christianity: “But now, the sado-masochism. God incarnated himself as a man, Jesus, in order that he should be tortured and executed in atonement for the hereditary sin of Adam. Ever since Paul expounded this repellent doctrine, Jesus has been worshiped as the redeemer of all our sins. Not just the past sin of Adam: future sins as well, whether future people decided to commit them or not!” (286).

What he does with this paragraph, by use of carefully placed adjectives and italics, is rhetorically imply that this is craziness. At no point in here is there an argument of any kind. Perhaps the paragraph is taken out of context? Nope! The paragraphs before and after do not support the implied conclusion, and an unwary reader will walk away with a strong feeling that Dawkins is right about this, and that all this God stuff is nonsense, but he will not be armed with anything substantial. This should come as no surprise, because this is exactly what rhetoric does.

Two more examples of rhetorical definition: “Compared with the Old Testament’s psychotic delinquent, the deist God…” and goes on to describe what he calls the “deist God” (p.59). And again on 68, “The Deist God…is certainly an improvement over the monster of the Bible.” Both rhetorical definitions: no evidence is given to support the argument, but a conclusion is reflexively defined with rhetoric and carried over throughout the text.

Ad Hominem

In addition to rhetoric, Dawkins also enjoys the use of ad hominem throughout his book, though for space considerations I will only give a few examples.

“Jung also believed that particular books on his shelf spontaneously exploded with a loud bag” (74). This is almost a textbook example of ad hominem: he notes that some people hold a belief “without adequate reason” (which is a rhetorical assumption made about theists, also) and then points out this about Jung to discredit him. In reality, what Jung thinks about spontaneously exploding books is not relevant to Jung’s theology. This is a personal attack, and not real reasoning.

Later, after describing one of Swineburne’s more dubious comments, Dawkins goes on to quote the man’s credentials and say, “If it’s a theologian you want, they don’t come much more distinguished. Perhaps you don’t want a theologian.” The first sentence is an implication that, because Swineburne is a theologian, he stands for all theologians, and the second sentence is actually a sentence devoid of meaning, especially given the context of the sentence. (p. 89)

Faulty Reasoning

Finally, when required to make clear arguments, Dawkins can only muster up faulty reasoning and reveal his own ignorance of the philosophical process. He says,

“Any entity capable of intelligently designing something as improbable as a Dutchman’s Pipe (or a universe) would have to be even more improbable than a Dutchman’s Pipe.” 146 This is all. He says nothing else. He does not quantify why it is improbable, he does not give us a step-by-step proof. He merely states, and moves on.

In chapter eight, Dawkins devotes a section to abortion (which is irrelevant, really, in the grand scheme of his argument), and attempts to set up an alternative moral system based on suffering. The problem with this is that he reflexively defines his moral system without giving a reason why such a system should be thusly based, when it could be based on something else entirely. It is times like these in which his philosophical amateurishness becomes easy to see. Any actual philosopher would spend a significant amount of time establishing a moral system from the ground up; Dawkins’ execution, in comparison, is sloppy and rushed.

One of the worst examples of his total disregard for rational modes of argumentation comes in his discussion of a similarity of passages in the Bible (p.273). Dawkins, unassisted by sources or reasoning, says, “The story of the Levite’s concubine is so similar to that of Lot, one can’t help wondering whether a fragment of manuscript became accidentally misplaced in some long-forgotten scriptorium: an illustration of the erratic provenance of sacred texts.” This is pure speculation, ungrounded in citation, evidence, or reason. Or if it is, he gives no reasons for it and does not follow it up with any argument whatsoever. And yet, like the rest of the text, the reader comes away with a feeling, a deep suspicion of everything that might be “wrong” with the things Dawkins attacks but with no concrete evidence or valid chains of reasoning to show as proof.

To Be Continued…?

Unfortunately, yes. If you have not read The God Delusion, you may be surprised at the amount of other fallacies I had to end up cutting out of my last draft to even get this article down to the right size. Strawman, Weasel Words, and Appeals to Emotion all had to be cut. Having fully intended to devote an entire section exclusively to Chapter 3’s numerous errors, I find I must save them for next week’s post.
Thanks to the people who have been patient with my busy schedule. Chapter 3 should be easy to take apart, so look forward to that last week.

8 Responses

You subvert Dawkins’ entire argument on yourself from the beginning when you sarcastically argue that he may not be real, he seems like a cartoon, a cruel parody. When Dawkins is the one arguing that the existence of God IS THE CRUEL PARODY of human nature we’ve imprisoned ourselves with.

My omissions are for this article only. As I said, I will simply have to make this a three-part series instead of a two-part series. There are no plans that I am aware of for a “God Delusion Part II.”

Further, Dawkins unchecked amount of anecdotes, tangents, and disconnected points are the real space concern of the text. If he were concerned about space, he would cut out all the stories which, though admittedly amusing, are not germane to the body of his argument.

At no point in my article am flippant or sarcastic: some days it is actually difficult for me to maintain a belief in Dawkins, because the way he argues, coupled with his immense popularity, is baffling to me. Having studied such thinkers as Hobbes, Hume, Russel, Sartre, and many other respectable thinkers, yes, Dawkins’ atheism does seem like a farce: a cruel joke at that, next to the powerful men I described who, without name-calling, rhetoric, or rambling anecdotes, honestly and brilliantly grapple with God’s improbability or with a world without God.
Here are atheists who deserve our respect, who will forever remain in the tradition and history of philosophy.
I shudder to think that an amateur like Dawkins would stand among the ranks of the great atheists of the past.

It seems like the comments left are neglecting to address key issues that Zac laid out. From what I have read of the God Delusion Zac lays out valid areas where Dawkins has left topics lacking full elaboration. I hope that in the future Dawkins will revise his book to give a more fully informed and flowing argument.